During orthopedic surgery, it may be necessary to separate a bone into sections. For example, bone lengthening surgery requires that a bone be cut through to create a proximal and a distal section. Similarly, in bone shortening surgery, the bone is cut through in two places and a middle section of bone is removed. To avoid unnecessary laceration of skin and tissue surrounding the bone, various tools have been developed to cut the bone from within the intramedullary canal.
Existing intramedullary bone saws are hand operated by a surgeon. The surgeon turns a drive shaft by hand to rotate cutting blades against the bone. It can take about thirty minutes for the surgeon to cut through a human femur by hand. In addition to these time requirements placed on the surgical team and the patient, the act of manually cutting the bone can be physically tiring to the surgeon.